Yuri is a student at St. Clair College in Windsor ON, studying Esports Administration and Entrepreneurship. Yuri is passionate about all aspects of esports and specializes in League of Legends and Overwatch. He has competed in the Collegiate Overwatch League for his school team - Saints Gaming.

League of Legends: Patch 9.18 Breakdown

Welcome everyone to the final regular season patch breakdown before the long-awaited Worlds patch is released. On the docket are a few qualities of life changes for a few of the champions who tend to stick in the shadows during patches. Besides these small buffs, many of the current priority champions are receiving selective nerfs to reduce their overall viability in the competitive scene.

What’s New in Patch 9.18?

Champions

Aatrox (NERF)

Passive – Deathbringer Stance:

Heals for bonus physical damage dealt to anything has been changed to only heal for 25% of the damage dealt when stabbing a minion (note this doesn’t affect healing with champions and monsters).

Xayah (NERF)

Zoe (BUFF)

Passive – More Sparkles!

Damage increased from 10/12/16/20/24/28/34/40/46/

52/60/68/76/84/94/104/114/124 to 16/20/24/28/32/36/42/48/54/

60/66/74/82/90/100/110/120/130

Breakdown

In summary, the patch had some slight increases and slight decreases across the board. Riot Games is firm on trying not to disturb the meta in an overwhelming matter right before Worlds and so far, they’re on the right track. Some of the more notable nerfs came in the form of Aatrox’s sustain and wave clear reduction and healing reduction against minions and Akali’s ultimate losing some firepower.

Changing Aatrox’s Deathbringer Stance to only heal for 25% of the damage dealt to minions reduces his sustain in lane quite substantially. Now, poking him out of lane is more feasible because his healing is reduced. As a result of this, Aatrox will have to look to use his passive on his opponents more often in lane to maximize his healing. Consequently, by doing so he risks taking even more damage or moving into a dangerous position, susceptible to being ganked. Lastly, the gutting of Aatrox’s Q will make him a lot easier to deal with in the side lanes. By reducing his damage to 40% at all levels, The Darkin Blade will feel a whole lot more like a dull knife than a great sword.

Taking Akali Down a Notch

Akali is another high priority champion that feels the wrath of the nerf hammer as her ultimate ability is losing a lot of its oomph. Removing the micro stun is a much-needed change as it gave Akali too much utility to an otherwise over tuned assassin. Playing around channeled abilities will be a lot more difficult now that Akali simply can’t cancel it with her Perfect Execution. In her case, it’ll be especially difficult in the early game.

Her ultimate also saw an early damage reduction and cooldown increase to mitigate her effectiveness of roaming around the map and finding kills. For the most part, odds are that the changes won’t be enough to suddenly drop her from top-tier in competitive play but they’re a start.

Don’t Forget About Teemo!

The buffs are very slight across the board with many champions getting some slight base stat increases to usher an easier laning phase for them. But the champion that sticks out the most is everyone’s favorite champion to hate, Teemo. The Swift Scout only received buffs solely on his ultimate ability. Teemo players can rejoice that the Noxious Traps will now trigger more responsively, not being mitigated (or avoided) by certain movement abilities. Beyond that, Teemo’s ultimate charges now scale by ability level, increasing his mushroom count by one per ability rank… and they can now bounce infinitely.

In conclusion, 9.18 looked to mostly take away power from Aatrox and Akali while also giving some slight power to many champions that have been left untouched for quite a while. There were also some changes made to client settings and many bug fixes as well. For a complete list of those, you can find the official patch notes from Riot Games here: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-918-notes.